October Chill
A storm of the decade hits the small community in Peace Fort Saint John
Hi folks! Something a little different here. Back in October, I was invited to share a short piece of fiction for a reading as part of the Lost Letters segment of the Dead Letter Bureau podcast, a Delta Green AP I’ve been enjoying tremendously! I’ve been writing a lot this past year, but its all been through the lens of Solo gaming. Once upon a time, I fancied myself a bit of a writer but a mixture of writers block and burnout meant that I never finished anything I set out to finish, and my inability to keep my scope in check always meant that I got ahead of myself mentally. I was my own worst enemy, truth be told. October Chill marks the first piece of pure fiction I’ve finished, specifically without using any of my solo RPG tools haha. This is pure fiction and it’s pretty short. You might notice the vibe is a little familiar, especially if you’ve read my most recent Delta Green run, Shadowed Past. Anyway, I hope you like it! It was fun to write, and if you prefer to listen, The DLB podcast did a great reading of it here.
I’ve been a Rec Tech up here in Fort Saint John, in British Columbia for a few years now. That’s a ‘Recreation Technician, to be precise, and it’s something between a Park Ranger and a Custodian, for those of you south of the Border. I love my job, even if it does involve dealing with a surprising amount of middle aged alcoholics and long, dull drives through the forest on my lonesome. At least, that’s what it’s like in the summer.
Out here, winter comes on quick and all the rec sites close once there’s more than a few feet of snow. Then my job gets a little more cozy, screwing around on my work laptop and fielding calls from the public that usually amount to ‘Have you looked outside today?’ Some of these serious recreators think 3 feet of snow is just there to weed out the casuals, but we get a few people who don’t bother to ask, and then I have to haul my ass out into the freezing cold and drive for a few hours to tell some kids to clean up and fuck off. That’s less pleasant, and thankfully rare. The nice thing about your average rec site is that it’s in the middle of fucking nowhere, by design, so you’re not likely to find someone there who doesn’t really want to be there. The downside, of course, is that when someone is there, it’s a hassle to get them to leave and that’s if you ever find out they were there in the first place. Rec Site’s have limited surveillance, or tech in general. It’s harking back to the older style of camping, no tech except what you bring with you, spotty cell service and complete privacy. Recently, in October, the snow came down earlier than we were expecting. Five feet that ground the Peace River district to a screaming halt. I was a little disappointed and surprised, given how temperate September had been, but if you work up here in the north, you have to get used to the weather getting more erratic as climate change really gears up. My dog Rusty was happy, at least, that I was working from home a little earlier. He was getting too old and scatter brained to take out on the trails with me. I had just finished my check in with my boss when the storm of the decade hit. It knocked out power from my street block for a couple of hours, and the sheer whiteness outside was blinding. Thunder crackled and lightning arced through the sky like a silvery membrane. The contrast between my old, dark rental and the blinding snow outside gave me a headache. I avoided the temptation to knock off early and crack open an afternoon beer and instead paced around my apartment trying to get a phone signal, without luck. Two hours passed, and the power came back, my workstation coming to life with its usual enthusiasm.
Getting back online, I felt a deep sense of unease. I had several missed calls from the public, and a few from my boss. When I called her, she picked up on the first ring, and shit wasn’t good. Half of Fort St. John had lost power, and there were currently three kids missing from home. Word was, they had snuck out with a few cases of stolen beer and planned to party it up on the old Coast Creek Trail Site. This would have been an idiotic thing to do at the best of times, but the storm had hit an hour or so after they had left, and no one could get a hold of them. I checked our data, and the storm would have hit the Trail before hitting the town and it had come on suddenly and without warning. My shift was technically over in another hour, but given my two hours offline and the tone in my boss’s voice, I volunteered to go check it out. I was closer by an hour than she, and besides, I knew she had kids of her own, both boys. Missing kids are the worst, and out in the rural communities, it’s just us and the Mounties, as well as any volunteers we can recruit from the public. RCMP was always stretched thin, and the kids would probably respond better to seeing me than a cop.
My rental has underground parking, so I was on the road in minutes, swaddled in layers of compression clothing and cold protection, with a couple of small heating packs stuffed in my hiking boots for good measure. My truck was designed for this kind of weather as part of my job, and I had a trail bag packed in the back at all times, but even with all that prepared, sundown was fast approaching as I hit the backroads leading to the Coast Creek Trail. Even my old reliable truck just about managed to hit the parking lot without getting stuck, so I knew I’d have to scout out the rest of the site on foot.
It was a pleasant two mile hike in spring or summer, but it would be grueling in winter, and the storm had left half the markers and trails buried in the snow. There was no other car in the lot, and the roads here had been empty, so if the kids were here, they must have arrived before the storm hit, which was potentially good news. They could have waited it out in their car, which meant there was still time to get the idiots out. I piled my gear on my back and set off, relying on years of walking the trail to guide me to each camp sight, my headlamp panning back and forth against the darkness.
Most sites were indistinguishable from the trail itself, so thick was the snow, but I found their car around the first kilometer. I was sweating and freezing and getting less worried and more pissed off as time went on, but even with all that, I knew something was wrong the moment I saw the beat up old Mercedes in Site 34A. All the doors were open and packed with snow. A cooler was tipped over, the cans of Bud light r inside frozen and burst, as well as a few empty cans of Lucky just visible through the ice. The snow on the way here had been packed but walkable but around the car it had frozen over the top, as though it had melted and refrozen overnight. I had to use a lot of care getting closer to the car, and the cold seeped further into my bones with every step. Something was wrong. I reached the car and laid a hand on the snow, brushing it off to see if there was anything left inside to indicate where the kids had gone, but I had only scooped away a few handfuls when my fingers brushed something solid. I scooped one more handful and stumbled back as glassy, protuberant eyes stared at me blankly from the ice. I felt my chest tighten as the rest of the head slumped out of the snow. This was Kevin Peyton, one of the missing kids. His face was blue and starting to blacken from frostbite, and he wore a look of mild surprise. I stumbled backwards and tried not to throw up, falling to my knees as the bile rose in my chest. My hands fell through the snow and ice, and even through my gloves I felt something odd. I pulled it up, revealing a long, pink winter jacket. the zipper torn and blood on the lapel. A name was on the inside,
“Teresa Monty”
Where had this come from? I hauled myself to my feet, and noticed a trail of heavy set steps, deeper into the tree line, away from the frozen over creek. I spared the car a look and felt the bile return, but I pressed on, following the steps deeper into the woods. Barely perceptible, between the large hiking boots tracks was a light, frantic step going in leaps and bounds across the snow, leaving just a small imprint. I crouched down close to look and confirmed my suspicion. The person was barefoot. If there had been a girl here, Theresa, then she was without boots or her jacket. I increased my pace, but knew from experience that the girl was going to be in rough shape, if she was still alive. What had she been doing here? And why had no mentioned her? Thinking about that helped me forget the body in the car behind me, at least for now, stress about the unknown replacing nausea. Flecks of ice began to fall in the cone of light from my headlamp, and while the thick layers of snow offered a small amount of background light, night had truly set when I entered a clearing far off the beaten trail. The temperature dropped dramatically as I entered the frost covered clearing and I wrapped my arms around myself as the biting cold breeze rendered my thick parka completely useless. I tried to follow the tracks, but they stopped a few paces in. I looked around, and caught a splash of red at the edge of the clearing. I called out, my voice too loud in the eerie, cushioned silence of the snowfall. Another step forward, another splash of red, the blood flash frozen so that it almost seemed to hang an inch or two off the ground. I swallowed, and called out, for Thomas and Morgan, the other two missing boys, and then eventually for Theresa. I received no response but for the howling wind. The conditions were worsening. I needed to leave, but when I turned to try to reorient towards the trail, my headlamp revealed what I had been unable to see on the edge of the clearing. Another body, frigid with frost and coated in blood from their shoulder length hair to the thick, expensive hiking boots. I wasn’t sure which of the boys this was, as apart from his clothes, his face was a bloody, mangled mess, his ribs jutting outwards, as though wrenched open. Frozen blood coated the trees around him, his limbs splayed at an awkward, broken angle.
I stood frozen, my breath forming a large cloud in front of me as I let out a ragged breath. I didn’t hear the footfalls, or see her move, but suddenly she stood there. A girl who couldn’t have been more than 18 years old, slight of frame and severely underdressed for the weather. Her sandy blonde hair was tangled with branches and leaves, falling over bare shoulders and a torn, oversized pink t-shirt. She wore leggings that cut off at the knee, and her arms hung limply at her side as she looked at the body at her feet, which were bare and stood lightly atop the thick, ice packed ground. I couldn’t make out what the T-shirt said, because the front was drenched in blood, running in rivulets down her torso, her hands and chin. She had a bruise forming on her temple and a split lip, although both were hard to see around the gore that marked her mouth and throat. A breeze came, and her clothes and hair rippled in the wind, despite the freezing temperature. The girl should be frozen solid, or at least frigid with cold, but the blood ran as though fresh, and her skin looked flush with exertion. I must have let out an involuntary noise, because she broke her gaze from the body and looked at me. Eyes a stark, electric blue regarded me, the pupils like jagged slits and I was nearly bowled over as wind roared around me. I let out a strangled scream as a wave of whiteness closed in. The girl took one last look at me, her arms bloody up to the elbow and eyes bright before she turned slowly and walked into the wall of the storm before it started rolling inexorably towards me.
I don’t know how I managed to get back to my truck before the storm hit. I turned and ran, blood pumping and panicked. I don’t even know if I went cross country or managed to find the trail again. I just remember sitting in my truck, hearing the hail slam down on my windshield and desperately, hopelessly, trying to work my phone. Numb fingers fumbled at the touchscreen, but I was too numb to navigate the apps, and I was out of signal range. I didn’t realize I was weeping until I saw the tears falling on the screen. The storm went on for hours, and I feared I would have to spend the night in my truck, but the wind eventually subsided, and I was able to dig myself out. It was only when I returned to my steering wheel and started the engine, pulling out of the lot and back into the road that I realised that the engine had been off throughout the storm.
Calling my boss was an ordeal, and I struggled to follow the fallout. The RCMP went in once the weather was clear for a few days and found the bodies of Kevin Payton and Thomas McGiven. Morgan Fellows was still missing and still is to this day. I never heard about a girl, although the mounties must have found her jacket, surely. It was a local scandal as everyone struggled to find someone to blame. I was free of suspicion, although no one wants to thank a messenger bearing such bad news, no matter the horror the messenger had to wade through to deliver it. It’s been a few months since then. Christmas came and went and while we’ve had more snowfall, we’ve been free of any more storms. The snow will thaw soon, and I’ll return to the great outdoors, long walks and interacting with the public. Things will return to normal. I keep seeing the girl in my dreams, walking through an endless, white landscape of ice and snow, leaving bloody footprints in an infinite trail behind her. A figure walks in the shadow nearby, always out of sight, but leaving.a trail of misshapen, hulking footprints behind. She looks over her shoulder, teeth stained red with blood and sinew as she regards me with those stunning, electric blue eyes. I wake in a sweat, my sheets frigid with cold. Every night, I go to take a sip from my glass of water, only to find it frozen solid, the heating cutting out and leaving the whole house freezing and drafty. I had to ask a neighbour to look after Rusty, my loyal old pup, out of fear he’d freeze before I woke. Most nights I didn’t bother to turn the heat back on. The cold doesn’t bother me anymore.
One of my favourite pieces you’ve written.
Loved it! Eerie, quiet, with a slow accumulation of wrongness. Reading this after your APs, I can see why Delta Green is such a perfect fit for you hahah.